Prince Rahul's Key Ideas from How to Win at the Sport of Business
by Mark Cuban

1. Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love.

2. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.

3. Hire people who you think will love working there.

4. Sales Cure All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales.

5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them.

6. Don't worry about perks from the outset.

7.Open offices keep everyone in tune with what is going on and keep the energy up.

8. As far as technology, go with what you know.

9. Keep the organization flat.

10. NEVER EVER EVER buy swag.

11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm.(Public Relation)

12. Make the job fun for employees.(reward them)

• I wrote overviews of what I was selling, why I thought the business made sense, an overview of my competition, why my product and/or service would be important to my customers and why they should buy or use it.
• Once I could put the idea on paper, I gave the company a name.
• I tried to find people to shoot holes in the name.
• It’s as if the missing link for success in a business is cash to get started. It’s not.

• The minute you take money, the leverage completely flips to the investor. They control the destiny of your dreams, not you.
• There are only two reasonable sources of capital for startup entrepreneurs: your own pocket and your customers’ pockets.
• Businesses don’t have to start big.
• It’s okay to start slow. It’s okay to grow slow.

• Sweat equity is the best startup capital.
• The best businesses in recent entrepreneurial history are those that began with little or no money. Dell Computers, Microsoft, Compaq, Apple, HP and tens of thousands of others started in dorm rooms, tiny offices or garages.
• The reality is that for most businesses, they don’t need more cash, they need more brains.

• Get the fundamentals right and then add to your base skills before you try to take on the trick shots.
• If you are adding new things when your core businesses are struggling rather than facing the challenge, you are either running away or giving up. Rarely is either good for a business.
• Creating opportunities means looking where others are not.
• We tend to be less than honest with ourselves about our strengths and weaknesses.

• It’s always the little decisions that have the biggest impact.
• I read more than three hours almost every day, but it gives me a level of comfort and confidence in my businesses.
• I spend time in bookstores because one idea from a book or magazine can make me money.
• As I would learn later in life, money makes you extremely handsome.

• The thing you do need to do is learn. Learn accounting. Learn finance. Learn statistics. Learn as much as you can about business.
• Read biographies about businesspeople.
• Going to college should be about learning how to learn and recognizing that learning is a lifelong endeavor.
• School isn’t the end of the learning process, it’s purely a training ground and beginning.

• Once you have learned how to learn, then you can try as many different things as you can, recognizing that you don’t have to find your destiny at any given age—you just have to be prepared to run with it when you do.
• The greatest obstacle to destiny is debt, both personal and financial.
• The more people you are obligated to, the harder it is to focus on yourself and figure things out.
• Financial debt is the ultimate dream killer.

• Everyone follows the path of least resistance.
• The path of least resistance is why I think Amazon.com, Apple and Google have been so successful.
• In business, one of the challenges is making sure that your product is the easiest to experience and to sell.
• Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.

• Always ask yourself how someone could preempt your products or service.
• Always run your business like you are going to be competing with biggest technology companies in your industry—Google, Facebook, Oracle, Microsoft, whomever.
• The sport of business is the ultimate competition. It’s 7 × 24 × 365 × forever.
• The biggest mistake people make is getting too greedy.

• In sports, the only thing a player can truly control is effort. The same applies to business.
• I had to kick myself in the ass and recommit to getting up early, staying up late and consuming everything I possibly could to get an edge.
• Effort is measured by setting goals and getting results.

• The edge is getting so jazzed about what you do.
• The edge is knowing that you can fail and learn from it, and just get back up.
• The edge is knowing that people think you’re crazy, and they are right, but you don’t care what they think.
• The edge is knowing how to blow off steam a couple times a week, just so you can refocus on business.
• The edge is recognizing when you are wrong and working harder to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

• “Everyone has got the will to win; it’s only those with the will to prepare that do win.”
• Win the battles you are in first, then worry about expansion internationally or into new businesses.
• Jobs = getting paid to learn.
• Take the lead, and you can control your own destiny.
• Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but are cheap.

• Every day some stranger somewhere in the world is trying to come up with a way to put you out of business. To take everything you have worked your ass off for, just take it all away. How cool is that?!
• Never settle. There is no reason to rush. If you aren’t happy with where you are, simplify your life and go out and try as many things as it takes to find what you may be destined to be.

• In business, to be a success, you only have to be right once.
• One single time and you are set for life. That’s the beauty of the business world.
• With every mistake and failure (not only mine, but also of those around me), I learned what not to do.
• I’ve learned to hire people in whom I can build trust, and let them take the ball and run with it.

The point of all this is that it doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and from those around you because … All that matters in business is that you get it right once.

When I spent far too much time fixing things rather than selling new deals, it killed my business.

• The best salespeople are the ones who put themselves in their customer’s shoes and provide a solution that makes the customer happy.
• The best salesperson is the one the customer trusts and never has to question.
• The best salesperson is the one who takes immense satisfaction from the satisfaction her customer gets.

• Entrepreneurs always need to be reminded that it’s not the job of their customers to know what they don’t.
• It’s part of your job as the owner of the company to stay ahead of them and “kick your own ass” before someone else does.
• No company is perfect, but the CEO who doesn’t listen to direct feedback from customers will not take the company as far as it can go.